August 20, 2019

“Corsica claims no Jew was deported under Nazi occupation...It is therefore even more outrageous to call the Ajaccio event 'a debate on the Jewish Question,' redolent of Hitler's 'Judenfrage'... Denounce the invitation to Sand, as an apology to today’s Jewish community. The Sand theses may not be ‘criminal’, but they are certainly ‘fiction’.”

Samuels noted that “Sand’s book ‘The Invention of the Jewish People’ has, according to the Middle East Quarterly, become 'a central plank of Palestinian and Arab propaganda, the purpose of which is to undermine the right of the Jewish people to its ancestral homeland'.” See: https://www.meforum.org/4909/shlomo-sand-the-arabs-darling

The Forum argued that, “The damage caused by 'The Invention' stems from its misrepresentation of established historical facts... So the Jews as a nation have no real historical claim to the territory of the State of Israel, including Jerusalem.”

The letter pointed out that, “Sand’s books, including ‘The Invention of the Land of Israel’ and ‘Why I stopped being a Jew’ are both lauded by the Hamas terrorist organization and have inspired the theft of Jewish heritage through the UNESCO World Heritage Committee (WHC), from the Temple Mount and the Western Wall in Jerusalem to the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron and Rachel’s Tomb in Bethlehem. Each year we witness the ‘Palestinization’ of the Jewish narrative based on the myths propagated by Shlomo Sand.”... “In the same manner, the Sand principles work for de-Christianization, as the Church of the Nativity - the birthplace of Jesus in Bethlehem - was registered as ‘Palestine heritage’.”

Samuels added, “Mr. Mayor, the Wiesenthal Centre considers Shlomo Sand a most inappropriate speaker, whose presentation in a so-called intellectual debate, could be misconstrued, resulting in recrudescent hate and violence against Jews. His discourse is also a tragedy for the Palestinians deluded into believing in an inevitable disappearance of the Jewish state rather than encouraging reconciliation and peace.”

The Centre stressed, “we are aware that Corsica claims that no Jew was executed or deported under Nazi German occupation, due to the protection of the Corsican people and its local government. It is therefore even more outrageous to call the Ajaccio event 'a debate on the Jewish Question,' redolent of Hitler's 'Judenfrage'."

“We therefore call on you to publicly denounce the invitation to Sand, as an apology to today’s Jewish community. The Sand theses may not be ‘criminal’, but they are certainly ‘fiction’,” concluded Samuels.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center is one of the largest international Jewish human rights organizations with over 400,000 member families in the United States. It is an NGO at international agencies including the United Nations, UNESCO, the OSCE, the OAS, the Council of Europe and the Latin American Parliament (Parlatino).